Track Listings (9) - Disc #1| All Artists: Title: Strange Fruit Members Wishing: 0 Total Copies: 0 Label: ITM Release Date: 1/1/1997 Genres: Jazz, Pop, Rock Styles: Cool Jazz, Modern Postbebop, Adult Contemporary, Adult Alternative Number of Discs: 1 SwapaCD Credits: 1 |
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 | Strange Fruit Genres: Jazz, Pop, Rock
As Sting expanded past The Police into his solo career and further still with young jazz musicians Brandford Marsalis and Kenny Kirkland, he encountered the venerable Gil Evans who had embraced rock in the past with his... more » |
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Album Description As Sting expanded past The Police into his solo career and further still with young jazz musicians Brandford Marsalis and Kenny Kirkland, he encountered the venerable Gil Evans who had embraced rock in the past with his big band recordings of Jimi Hendrix tunes. These live recordings from Perugia, Italy in 1987 (plus one earlier Evans recording from 1976) fuse the work of the two principles accompanied by sidemen of reknown. This night included Hendrix ("Little Wing") and Sting pieces ("Tea in the Sahara", "Consider Me Gone") in addition to Billy Holiday's classic "Strange Fruit". Similar CDs
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CD ReviewsA Strange incomplete release of the landmark Sting/Gil Evans Michael Moricz | Astoria NY | 09/16/2006 (3 out of 5 stars) "Though you can't tell from the poorly-selected samples included here, the Gil Evans band does indeed actually play on this CD, sometimes in a full force wall of complex voicings (though the full horn section is usually used sparingly -- after all, how much time could Gil Evans have had to write the arrangements for this one-night stand?). Also, tracks 3, 6 and 9 don't involve Sting at all, being from a completely different Gil Evans live performance (in Belgrade) eleven years earlier!
The Sting/Gil Evans tracks are from a live performance in Italy from 1987. Though I don't have my original copy of that performance accessible to me now, I know that there were other songs from that performance that are not included here, in particular an oddly exciting version of "Roxanne" where Sting seems to enter in the wrong key but which by the end has a hugely wailing wall of horns over the rocking finale. I believe there were also performances of "Shadows in the Rain" and "Synchronicity I" which are not included here. Ironically, these are some of the highest-energy songs of the evening, and they're all missing from this CD. So while the performance is a strong four stars, the incompleteness of this release tempers my rating slightly. If you are a Sting fan and have no copy of this material at all, you probably should own it, incomplete as this version is. It was an unusual night, as Sting was a great admirer of Gil Evans, who died the year after this concert took place. The performance feels like perhaps there was not too much rehearsal (and we know how Sting loves to rehearse), but all concerned jumped in fearlessly, creating a rather adrenalin-filled night to remember. There's a high-energy vulnerability to Sting's singing on the concert, and the edgily dissonant sound of Gil Evans' charts and band bring a frenzied nobility to the proceedings. If possible, you should probably hold out for the original release of this Gil Evans Sting material (with all the additional songs). It is called "Last Session" and, as of the time I'm typing this, appears at Amazon here: [...] I believe that "Last Session" was a bootleg, and I'm sort of assuming "Strange Fruit" is too, which is no reason why you shouldn't either one. I'm sure Sting won't mind. ;) " |
